MPAA Upholds 'R' Rating On Holocaust Doc

EXCLUSIVE: When filmmakers appeal ratings and try to measure themselves against ratings given other films, the MPAA generally refuses to engage in those comparisons. So the MPAA ratings board today shot down an appeal by Oscilloscope Laboratories to rescind the “R” rating given the Holocaust documentaryA Film Unfinished. It was upheld in a just-concluded appeals hearing by a 12-3 vote. Oscilloscope, the indie distribution company founded by Beastie Boys co-founder Adam Yauch, acquired the film at Sundance. He expressed outrage earlier this week when told that the film got an R rating for “disturbing images of Holocaust atrocities including graphic nudity.” Oscilloscope’s appeal today included an impassioned argument by director Yael Hersonski to judge the nudity in the film from a historical and educational standpoint. A letter was presented by Warsaw Ghetto survivor Hana Avrutzky, and an argument was also made that the film should be judged similarly to the Steven Spielberg-produced 1998 documentary The Last Days, which drew a PG-13 rating despite featuring a mass execution and nudity in its depiction of the humiliation and atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis.

A Film Unfinished documents an unfinished Nazi propaganda film shot in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. Discovered in East German archives after WWII, it has been a resource for historians trying to paint a picture of the transit point before Jews were deported to concentration camps. The original film was staged, but the documentary features the raw footage shot to make that propaganda film. It provides a stark contrast and gives a glimpse of how Jews were actually treated by Nazis in the Ghetto, and how propaganda films were employed to cover things up. Yauch, who feels the rating could hinder the documentary’s use as an educational tool, remains incensed.

“In a world where young people are bombarded with meaningless entertainment, it’s unfortunate that a film with real educational and historic value would be denied to them by an organization that is supposed to be working to help them,” Yauch said in a statement. “I still have hope that the MPAA will reconsider at some point in the future, so young people will be able to learn from this film.”

Recent Comments

The changing of the all audience designation to the appropriate audience designation is to allow a more...

Liz

5 years

Terrifying children for ideological purposes is just cruel. You can certainly wait until they're 17, and convey...

suffered enough

5 years

"In a world where young people are bombarded with meaningless entertainment" -- like the Beastie Boys? He...

The film will be released August 18 in New York and two days later in L.A., followed by a national roll-out. Despite the setback the film certainly has an awareness level it didn’t before the rating situation flared up. Here is a trailer for the documentary:

only the MPAA. Nobody will view this film and think about sex. Teenagers should be able to see this film and learn from it. It’s not alright to hate people because they are different from you, maybe we don’t want people to learn that while they are young and impressionable. MPAA, wrong again

demoncat • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

interesting they give a spileberg film pg13 when it had the same stuff that got this film an r yet the MPAA will not consider maybe changing the film that should be seen for some new history of the evil of the holocaust. at least the thing did not get an nc17 given the nudity

Jesse • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

Why get a rating at all? The MPAA sole purpose is to further the interests of the studios. It is not a friend of independent, documentary, or foreign film. Blockbuster is dead. Newspapers are dying. Why continue to give this organization money and power? You don’t need an MPAA rating to be released…shown in the theatres…sold on video.

Philpott • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

Actually the majority of national theater chains require an MPAA rating for a film to be shown on their screens. Also, US schools can see a rating and it says safe or not safe without having to view the content.

David • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

I find it so foolish on the part of the MPAA to allow Steven Spielberg’s THE LAST DAY’S to be distributed with a PG-13 rating and force an R rating on what is certainly an equally important work on the very same subject. The MPAA needs to get its head out of the sand and come to grips with a changing society. We as theatre-goers should be allowed to make the final choice to either see this film or not and if we don’t expose this work to as many people as passible, we stand a chance that our children will grow up never understanding the horror of this event!

Today's Deals • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

I believe the R Rating stems more from the digital effects that were added to the film in Post — the searing flames Hitler draws from his finger tips, and the X-Wing fighter pilot who tries to assassinate him.

But I could be wrong.

jason • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

wow that’s not funny

Ripsnorter • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

I haven’t seen the film but this sounds to me like Hollywood Puritanism and prudery. Does the MPAA really think the graphic nudity is there to provide cheap thrills? Ever heard of context and purpose? This sounds like a film that needs to be seen and thanks to this rating decision young people, who probably wouldn’t watch this outside an educational establishment anyway, won’t even have that chance.

A. M. • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

It’s highly inappropriate to call images of either emaciated naked dead bodies piled up or emaciated naked people waiting in line for whatev or being led into the showers “graphic nudity”. That’s completely missing the nature of those images and the impact.

However, if the film includes such scenes – scenes/pictures that I was practically forced to watch/see at around age 12 or 13 in history class – then I fully support the notion of an R rating. I saw similar pictures in the concentration camp in Dachau which I visited as an adult. I’m not claiming that I wasn’t sick to my stomach then, either.

I understand that Mr. Yauch’s claims of “real education value” and his theory that “young people will be able to learn from this film” reflect mainstream thinking and that he doesn’t refer to those images per se but to the film as a whole.

I challenge the notion that we gain anything valuable and good by keeping the suffering alive, though. I challenge the notion that it helps me to see in great detail just how much my ancestors have suffered, how they were victimized – may they be Native American or Jewish or African or…. or to see what my ancestors have done to others.

Any time well meaning people show a film like this one, they automatically have to talk about Hitler’s idiotic race theories, they have to inadvertently repeat the message. They show in detail what crazy things people came up with (shop boycotts, public humiliation/defamation, etc. etc.)

[BTW Those exact same methods (shop boycott, public humiliation/defamation, beatings) that you can see and read about in history books, films etc. are still in use as Haim Tabakman and Merav Doster showed us in their film ENAYIM PETHUKHOTH (EYES WIDE OPEN) imdb listing. That totally blew my mind. The parallels!]

Those images of cruelty and extreme human suffering are nothing short of shocking and highly disturbing. I found the images from Abu Ghraib that the media chose to throw at the world just as disturbing.

I think it was when the Abu Ghraib pics were released that there was a discussion re information value vs. dignity of the depicted prisoners. I did not choose to see the pics, there was no warning label and the pics where everywhere. I wish I had never seen them.

Tons of documentaries, books, movies on the topic – and the next news post has comments like “antisemitism is alive and well!”. I thought the goal of all that education would be to prevent history from repeating itself and to kill -isms. Maybe this approach simply isn’t working?

V E G A • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

How to stir the masses to dismantle the ratings system? Wasn’t the Kirby Dick “this film is not yet rated” doc enough? I have not yet seen this picture but an “R” rating for the purposes stated only underscores the inconsistent, subjective, out-dated monarchy of the MPAA.

Charles Grossman • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

Even the MPAA seems to accept how eroded the rating system has become, since it stopped applying any comprehensible standard for rating trailers. I challenge anyone to explain the MPAA’s definition of “Appropriate Audiences”, which replaced “All Audiences” on green-banded trailers a couple of years ago.

Comedymaven • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

Is there anyone for whom the MPAA has held any credibility whatsoever in many years?

Liz • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

Frankly, I’m not sure why people want to expose children to such horrific images. It’s hard even for an adult to watch, and it must be truly terrifying for children. Genocide is something that needs to be taught, but should grade school kids really see mass-murder on film?

santa • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

The only way we will educate the youth to the extreme horrors of unbridled nationalism, unquestioned patriotism, fear mongering, and group demonization is to show them the historical outcomes of such behavior.

It is one thing to read about atrocities in a dry history book, hear teachers’ dry lectures, and to see the gussied up Hollywood versions… but to see the stark reality of documentaries of such atrocities is to really educate children & scare them straight about such things.

Liz • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

Terrifying children for ideological purposes is just cruel. You can certainly wait until they’re 17, and convey the same message.

I remember having to watch a Holocaust filmstrip in grade school. A few of the boys thought it was “cool” and played “Gestapo” on the playground. They were totally into the sadistic element of it. It would have been better to let him mature a little first.

Sid Ganis • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

In an time where the number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling and Iran is trying to rewrite history by denying the Holocaust this movie is even more important.

just goes to show that the MPAA rating board are a bunch of morons that can’t handle a little bit controversy.

Very disturbing!

Santayana • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

The chances are pretty slim of kids bopping accidentally into the multiplex to see “A Film Unfinished” thinking it’s a good dating picture or has a neat car chase. Giving it an “R” would prevent it from being considered by some schools for field trips (even with a teacher chaperoning) or later on video. Anyone who sees this film is going to be prepared for it.

The larger question is whether — as arbitrary and repressive as CARA is — do we want to revert to the pre-Code days when any damn fool could be a local censor? Remember, America has become a country where the Texas school board thinks “The Flintstones” is a documentary.

(Brain fart: Does “A Film Unfinished” have anything to do with “Prisoner of Paradise”?)

moe • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

Many years ago, my Catholic high school showed holocaust newsreel footage which included nudity. Trust me, nobody was doing any salacious talk afterward. It’s time for the MPAA to grow up. A shock to the system can be just what people need now and then. The filmmakers have my sympathy. I hope they can appeal and win.

Trailerman • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

Youch is missing the boat. He should run right to Spielberg. His influence and passion for holocaust documentation is so overwhelming, I’m quite sure that he can end this nonsense with one pine call!!!!

santa • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

It is time for the theater chains to wise up and not require an MPAA rating. In the age of the internet when any movie goer can find out ample details of a movie and what they might find objectionable for their kids to watch, the MPAA ratings system has as much relevance to the movie content as the food label ‘diet’ has to foods that are healthy for human consumption. It is time to put the rabid MPAA dog out to pasture. The dirty old coots are so biased towards the major studios and lowest common denominator content that they are retarding adulthood in this country.

suffered enough • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

“In a world where young people are bombarded with meaningless entertainment” — like the Beastie Boys? He didn’t seem to mind meaningless entertainment when he was making money hand over fist with it.

If you think it’s unlikely that kids will be sneaking into this movie
by a famous multi-millionaire rapper of foul-mouthed nursery rhymes you are either ignorant or playing dumb, cookie puss.

Trailerman • on Aug 5, 2010 2:07 pm

The changing of the all audience designation to the appropriate audience designation is to allow a more specific use of trailer targeting as it applies to the movie going public. You can make trailers more specific and the MPAA can allow more flexability of trailer content by starting that the trailer is only representing a specific type of film and audience. So if you see a green band trailer for Saw, you will not see it play with Cats and Dogs. I’m exagerating to make the point, but I hope hat explains it.